iPodia, Good ol’ Porterville, and a New Job

Time is flying! And I have a lot to update you guys on because so much has happened since last semester. So here’s a list of life updates:

1) I went to GREECE right after finals
2) My hometown of Porterville is still as dear to my heart as ever.
3) I survived in frigid temperatures that no human being should ever have to endure
4) I got a JOB so I am now officially an ~adult~ (is that how you use those things?).

Now that I’ve given you the cliffnotes of this blogpost, you can choose whether or not to keep reading, but I shall keep typing in hopes that you stick with me. So yeah, I went to Greece! For those of you that read my earlier blog post about iPodia (If you don’t know what iPodia is, make sure to check out my earlier post), I mentioned that there was a chance for me to go to Greece to visit the University of Patras for a week, and that’s exactly what happened. Of course, I had the time of my life, and I got really really close to my 8 trusty travel companions (pictured above at the one and only Parthenon). And I gotta say, hands down my favorite part of going abroad is how close you get to the people you travel with. Over the course of the week, we spent about 3 days in Athens, where I had the best 2 AM gyros of my life, saw hundreds of surprisingly well-fed stray cats, and a lot of extremely old historically significant stuff. After Athens, we met up with students from the University of Technion in Israel and the Greek students at the University of Patras, where we had the chance to attend lectures and hands-on workshops on everything from robotics to virtual reality to the U of Patras Formula 1 racing team. All in all it was an amazing experience, and a fitting end to one of the most unique classes at USC.

I flew back to the states just in time to celebrate Christmas with my family. It was great to be home because I wasn’t home for Thanksgiving, so it was the first time in almost a year that all of my siblings and my mom had been together at the house. So, I took full advantage of being home for 2 weeks and ate as much of my mom’s cooking as possible.

These past few months, I’ve flown more than I have my entire life, because I also had the opportunity to go to Chicago with about 20 other USC students from the Catholic center to a Student Leadership summit! I spent a week there, where I met Catholic student leaders from universities all over the United States. The conference was a great way for me to grow in my faith, and I came back to campus with a ton of new ideas for how to better lead in my community through Bible Studies, homeless ministry, mission trips, and so much more. My next blog post will be more about my experience in Chicago, but I want to tell you about my job!

Ladies and Gents, Jose Hernandez is officially employed and working full-time at Johnson & Johnson for the next 6 months, and he’s pretty stoked about it, and he’s also gonna stop typing in the third person now… Anyway, I got a Co-Op and it’s pretty great! I’m not taking classes this semester, and instead I’m working as a “Project Supply Chain Analyst”. Basically, my job involves a lot of data mining, where I report and analyze metrics on different projects at J&J. I focus on the supply chain operations as well as on some of the financial aspects. Right now, I’m in training and learning a ton every day. However, I am working in Irvine and commuting with another intern from USC, so the drive can get long. But, with the help of podcasts and a cup of coffee I’m doing a-okay so far. No homework is also a huge plus. Also I’m an old man now and go to sleep at about 10 o ‘clock every night, which is weird, but I’m getting used to it.